1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of judging a hit, suitable for use in a game system using a cassette-type storage medium including an optical disk, a magnetic disk, or a semiconductor memory storing program data, and also to a computer-readable storage medium storing game data.
2. Description of the Related Art
A great number of game systems have been proposed. They include a home system consisting of a game machine combined with a television monitor, a game machine for use in an amusement arcade, a system consisting of a personal computer or a work station, a display, and an audio output device, etc. In any case, the system includes a controller used by a player to play a game, a storage medium storing game program data, a CPU for controlling the system to generate sounds and images in accordance with the game program data, a processor for generating images, a processor for generating sounds, a CRT for displaying the images, and a loudspeaker for outputting the sounds. As for the storage medium, a CD-ROM, a semiconductor memory, and a cassette including a semiconductor memory are widely used.
One of popular games using such a system is a shooting game. In the shooting game, a player operates a controller so as to move a character (hereinafter referred to as a player character) in a game space and shoot a bullet or a laser beam from the player character toward a character (enemy character) operated by a CPU. If a bullet or a laser beam hits an enemy character, that enemy character disappears from the game scene and the player gets a score. In such a shooting game, it is known to scroll the player character either in a vertical direction or in a horizontal direction. The shooting game usually includes a plurality of events called stages. At each stage, the player is expected to eliminate all enemy characters appearing at that stage while avoiding the player character from being hit by bullets or laser beams shot by enemy characters. In many shooting games, the player character is allowed to be shot by enemies as many times as n. However, if the player character is shot n+1 times, the game is over.
As described above, the shooting game is a simple game in which a player character is operated so as to delete enemy characters. Although an extremely great number of shooting games are proposed by various game software vendors, they are similar to each other and are not very attractive.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a computer-readable storage medium storing program data of an attractive game.